Sermon Cloud

Last week we talked about how to live a spiritually frustrated life based off of the Israelites failures in chapters 4-6.  Now, chapter 7 gives us the opposite picture.  We see signs of spiritual life.  They’re spiritual lives are beginning to be ones of delight.  So this week we’re going to look at how you can actually end up having a spiritual life that is life-giving.

1.  Life-giving spirituality involves ongoing repentance

Now that word repent is a churchy word, but it is a pretty important churchy word.  In fact, I probably sound like broken record b/c I keep sounding off this theme of repentance week after week, but it is God’s fault.  He wrote Bible and he keeps repeating the important stuff over and over and repentance is one of those really important things.  First, let me tell you what it isn’t, then I’ll tell you what repentance is.

Repentance is not remorse.  What is remorse?  Remorse is feeling bad or sorry about something and the way it will impact yourself and others.  For example, the Israelites who were living spiritually frustrated lives in chapters 4-6 showed remorse but not repentance.  Listen to I Sam 6:19 “The people mourned b/c the result of the heavy blow the Lord had dealt them.”  There sadness was—man our actions led to a heavy blow of punishment and their really sad about that.  See one characteristic of remorse is that it is             self-centered:  this is really going to negatively impact my life.

As parents you see this all the time.  Milly has gotten into a pulling hair phase that I hope we’re leaving.  She will pull her brothers hair and just sit there like all is peachy in the world.  When I call her name, she looks at me like “What Dad?”  Not even remorseful.  Until I mention the word time-out, and remorse kicks in.  “Waaaaaa,”    See, she is just concerned about the impact on her life, and this is one element of remorse.

But remorse isn’t solely identified by a me centeredness.  Another mark of remorse is that it is reactionary & immediate.  Most of you remember the Michael Vick debacle where he got involved with dog fighting.  The headlines of the article in the LA Times was this, “Remorseful Vick Enters Guilty Plea.”  Let me read to you what he wrote,  “I offer my deepest apologies to everybody out there in the world who was affected by this whole situation,” he said. “And if I’m more disappointed with myself than anything, it’s because of all the young people, young kids, that I’ve let down, who look at Michael Vick as a role model.

So Michael Vick was sorry for the impact he had on others, and he reacted to it with this statement.  See his remorse is quick and reactionary.  Even the newspaper called him remorseful.  But the question is he repentant? 

Well, let’s talk about what repentance looks like.  See Biblical repentance requires you to change at least 2 things:

(1)  Change your behavior

V3 “If you are returning to the Lord with all your hearts, then rid yourselves of the foreign gods and the Ashtoreths.”  Step 1:  change your behavior.  You have been worshipping other gods.  Stop it.  Turn from whatever you have been trusting in.

So, with Michael Vick, we’ll know if he really is more than remorseful and is taking steps of repentance if years later he changed his behavior and no longer went back to that sort of criminal activity.

So, Biblical repentance involves concrete behavioral change.  In our text, the concrete behavior change that God wanted was to stop worshipping idols.  God tried so many ways to show them the powerlessness of these false gods so that they would turn from them.  Last week we saw one of the ways God did this was in the temple of Dagon and how the ark was placed at the foot of this false god and the next morning the god was on its face prostrate before the true God with its head and hands cut off. God longed for the Philistines and the Israelites to change their behavior and stop worshipping this false god.

Actually, God is communicating the same message to us today.  One of our gods that we worship, All-Mighty American economy, has hand its hands and feet cut off in the last month and it is lying prostrate in the dust before God.  And we’re starting to see that the Almighty American economy that we put our hope and trust in to make us prosperous, wealthy, live the American Dream, isn’t able to deliver for us right now.  And part of what is going on right now is that we all need to change our behavior.  The ways in which we were putting our hope and trust in the American Dream, the ways we were getting our joy out of what the economy could give us and not who we are in Christ, we need to change that behavior. 

So let me make it practical.  When your wife comes to you and says, “You work too much.  Remorse is feeling bad about that, repentance is actually changing your schedule and beginning to work less over time.  Or here is another example related to the economy.  For those of you who are Christians, you know that God wants you to give at least 10% of your money back to Him, not b/c he needs it, but so that you don’t become a slave to your money.  So, as a Christian, when you look at your finances and realize that you’re not giving at least 10%, Remorse is feeling guilty about it, repentance is budgeting so that you can do something about it in the future.

TRANS: that is step 1 of repentance:  change your behavior over time.  Proof is in the pudding.

(2)  Change your gaze

The second step is to change your gaze.  Notice the next part of v3, after telling them to change their behavior and get rid of the idols v3 says, “and commit yourselves to the Lord.”  The word commit there in Hebrew literally means to fix yourself on Him.  So if your thinking about this in terms of direction.  Horizontally, you were on this life-path of alcoholism, and you’re repenting, so you have turned from it and the first thing you do is fix your gaze upward, vertically, on God. 

This is why every AA class begins and the first step is what, “Acknowledge that you need a higher power.”  Change your gaze—get it off whatever false god you had it on & get a new vision of grandeur and glory in God. 

Heb. 12:2 says “Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith.”  How?  So this is where prayer and fasting and the Bible enter your journey.  The primary way you fix your gaze on Jesus is through listening to Him by spending time in His word, by praying, and by fasting.  See this is what the Israelites missed in our text in chapters 4-6 that they get here in ch7.  Notice v6 says “On that day the fasted and there they confessed, “We have sinned against the Lord.”  See this is so different from chapters 4-6, where not only did they not turn from their behavior (step 1 in repentance), but they also didn’t fix their gaze on God through prayer and confession. 

TRANS:  So, Biblical repentance involves (1) changing your behavior &   (2) changing your gaze.

2.  Life-giving spirituality involves remembering the thundering Lord

If you look at v10 it says, “But that day the Lord thundered with loud thunder against the Philistines and threw them into such a panic that they were routed before the Israelites.”  Bottom line—the Israelites repented, and God acted on their behalf.  They finally stopped treating Him like a jeanie, and started treating Him like he was their Lord, and God responded and moved on their behalf.

Then look at what they did in response.  In v12, it says, “Then Samuel took a stone and set it up between Mizpah and Shen.  He named it Ebenezer, saying “Thus far the Lord has helped us.”  Constructing Ebenezers is something you’ll see throughout the OT.  What is an Ebenezer?  It is a monument, in this case a collection of stones, that was to help them remember a very specific way in which God moved on their behalf.  Ebenezer means, “Stone of help,” so this was to signify a very personal way in which God intervened to help them.  This wasn’t a general theological truth, “God is love; God Rescues His People.”  No, this was, “God thundered against the Philistines on such and such a date and threw them into a panic and routed them.”  And they wanted to remember that.

See, we, as Christians, are to do the same thing.  We’re to build Ebenezer’s, monuments, that remind us of God’s faithfulness and movement on our behalf.  And I am not talking about general theological truths.  We’re to build Ebenezer’s of when God has acted on our behalf, personally. 

For example.  Many of you know that Bradford and I have suffered through 4 miscarriages.  Those were some of the darkest and most painful hours of our lives.  During these we saw God act in such a way that I began     building Ebenezers.  Well, actually, buying Ebenezers. if you have no skills as a handy-man, then you have to buy your Ebenezers as opposed to building them.  I don’t think the point is the construction, the point is having something physical and tangible that reminds you of God’s faithfulness on your behalf.

Some of you are probably wondering?  Why are you commemorating such a horrible event?  I thought you would be memorializing something good that God did for you.  Well, the miscarriages were definitely bad, but what we’re memorializing is the way a good God takes a horrific event and somehow works it for our good.  Let me tell you just a few of the ways he worked this bad thing for our good..

(1) Our marriage:  This suffering that we went through drew us nearer to each other than anything else that I can think of.  Crying together, praying for each other in desperation, fasting for each other, going to counseling, going to the doctor’s office together, clinging to Jesus, hoping for your spouse when hope seems lost.  During these times a sweetness was formed in our marriage, b/c a God who knew the pain of losing a child drew near.  He empathized.  And He moved with compassion on our behalf, deepening our love for Him and for one another. 

(2) Our resurrected children:  But here is another way he turned the tables on evil and worked it for our good.   Just as He resurrected His Son Jesus, so he resurrected our little ones.  This is why I bought rocking chairs, for our children were held and rocked by their loving heavenly Father, not me or their mom, and every time I rock Ford and Milly in them I remember that my heavenly Father rocks them in His arms and that I’ll see them and know them one day. 

(3) We fear suffering a little less.  But there is one other critical way God moved on our behalf in the darkness of our miscarriages.  He lessened our fear of suffering.  Each time we have been through it, we have built up antibodies to the fear that surrounds suffering.  As a child, I had an irrational fear of the dentist.  I couldn’t stand the dentist and thought I wasn’t going to make it out of the dentist’s chair alive.  This was particularly problematic since my dad was a dentist.  Nevertheless, the more times I went to the dentist, the more I began to realize that he wasn’t as bad as I originally thought.  Each time that I made it out alive, the fear of the dentist lessened.  Such is it with our suffering through miscarriages and the way that has impacted how we view suffering in general.  We’ve experienced God in such a powerful and compassionate way in these times that we know He will see us through what is to come.

This is why we have the rocking chairs, with each of our 4 children’s names engraved on the back of the chairs, so that every time we sit in them we are reminded of a personal God who has moved personally on our behalf.   You see, the more we remember God’s faithfulness in the past, the more we find ourselves experiencing Him in the present, and the more confidence we have in Him for our future.  So, I would encourage you to                                 start building, or buying if you’re like me, Ebenezer’s that remind you of personal ways that God has acted on your behalf.

TRANS:  So, life-giving spirituality involves repenting, it involves remembering God’s activity in your life, and finally…

3.  Life-giving spirituality involves trusting in your High Priest

If you look at our text, notice that in v5 Samuel, their High Priest, says, “Assemble all Israel at Mizpah and I will intercede with the Lord for you.”  In v8 they continue, “Do not stop crying out to the Lord our God for us, that he may rescue us from the hand of the Philistines.  Then Samuel took a suckling lamb and offered it up as a whole burnt offering to the Lord.  He cried out to the Lord on Israel’s behalf, and the Lord answered Him.”  See Israel knew that the prayers of their High Priest mattered.  Samuel, as their High Priest, was standing in between them and God and interceding for them, and God listens and he acts accordingly. And not only was Samuel interceding for them, but he was offering a sacrifice of a lamb for them, as a way of dealing with their sin that could separate them from God.  See, life-giving spirituality for the Israelites was intimately connected to their High Priest.

Well, my friends, such is the case for us.  Our spiritual well being is dependent on our high priest as well, the High Priest to whom Samuel was ultimately pointing to.   See listen to Hebrews 7, “because Jesus lives forever, he has a permanent priesthood. 25Therefore he is able to save completely^[c] those who come to God through him, because he always lives to intercede for them.  

26Such a high priest meets our need—one who is holy, blameless, pure, set apart from sinners, exalted above the heavens. 27Unlike the other high priests, he does not need to offer sacrifices day after day, first for his own sins, and then for the sins of the people. He sacrificed for their sins once for all when he offered himself.

Unlike Samuel, he didn’t need to offer the lamb for His own sins, for He was himself pure and spotless Lamb of God who came in the flesh.  So as High Priest, he didn’t offer a sacrifice, but he became the sacrificial lamb.  God’s long postponed justice for mankind’s sin was satisfied by the God-man.  And then, our text says that this same High Priest now lives to intercede for you.  As your attorney, He approaches the bench of a just judge who must exercise justice and He says, “Your honor, Father, justice demands that you forgive them, for it would be unjust for you to punish me, your perfectly righteous Son, again.  You see, Jim & Susy are hidden in me.  They have trusted in me and I have entrusted myself to them. So to punish them would be to punish me, again.”  And the judge, who is also a loving Father smiles in delight at His Son, and all of His Sons & Daughters, and says, “It is true.” 

Do you see why life-giving spirituality is dependent on trusting in Jesus as your high priest.  Think about it.  If you trust in yourself and your own moral record before God, then when you're doing well morally you'll feel like God really loves you.  I haven't been sleeping around, I have been nice to people lately…so God must really want to be with me.  But then, when things head south morally, so will you're spirituality.   You'll think, "God doesn't want to be with someone like me, somebody who keeps blowing it.  And you'll drift further and further from him."  I see it happen all the time. 

If this is true for you, then you never became a son or daughter of God.  See if Ford and Milly get in trouble, then they know that they’re still my children and that I still love them.  And this will never change no matter how much trouble they get in—their actions will never change their status as my children.  See, if your access to the Father is secure, not based on anything you have done, but based on the actions of your true High Priest, Jesus Christ, who paid for all your failures with His own blood, who now lives to intercede for you and remind His Father of just how much He must love you as a Son, then your all of your actions—good ones and bad--will drive you more and more to God as a loving Father, rather than further and further from Him.  Ahhh, the grace offered by our true High Priest Jesus?  Do you know it?